Journey to the Virtual World

12 KPIs for high performance VDI

How do we know a user is getting a good performance on her/his VDI session? When she called help desk and shared that her Windows is slow, how can help desk quickly determine where the root cause is?

I covered that VDI workload differs to server workload here. In this context, the PCoIP metrics certainly play a key role in determining a good user experience.

There are 4 basic elements of infrastructure (CPU, RAM, Network and Storage). For each, there are certainly multiple metrics that can impact a user experience. I came up with the following 12 metrics. For each, I give my 2 cents on what I think a healthy value should be for a “snappy Windows”. Something that matches the experience you have on a US $1000 PC (with 27″ monitor).

[12 Jan 2016: V4V 6.2 can monitor the Disk Queue Length]

You should certainly establish your own threshold. The good thing is you can use vRealize Operations super metric preview to see your historical data.

By having 12 metrics that you check, you are far more comprehensive than checking say 4 metrics.

The above counter requires vRealize Operations for Horizon View. For short, we typically call it V4V. This is because it relies on agent inside the Guest OS (Windows in VDI case). You do not get PCoIP metrics from standard vRealize Operations, even if you install the End Point agent. That metric comes from View agent, which includes V4V agent.

Can you notice what metric is missing?

There is no Memory Consumed and Memory Active metrics. See this for explanation.

Take note that V4V 6.2 cannot measure Disk Queue Length. It’s not a major limitation as Disk Queue Length typically develops if the disk latency is high, or there is an issue with the driver.

Once you have the above metric, it is pretty easy to create a dashboard for Help Desk. Here is what it looks like. I’m only showing the top part of the dashboard.

The help desk just need 2 steps:

Search the user. We use the MS AD Login ID. I did a search above, hence it’s only showing 1 result as I typed the full user ID and there is only 1 match. I selected a user, and all the counters from Horizon session (from V4V adapter) are automatically shown.

Click on the VM object. This is to display the VM counters (from vSphere adapter)